Fraudulent Participants

Individuals who falsely claim to meet a study's eligibility criteria in order to participate in research, typically for financial compensation. In accessibility research, fraudulent participants may claim to have disabilities they do not have, undermining data validity and potentially leading to designs based on inauthentic experiences. The rise of generative AI has amplified this concern, as AI can generate responses that plausibly mimic the experiences of people with disabilities. Online and asynchronous research methods are particularly vulnerable, creating tensions between the need for verification and the desire to trust participant self-reports.